Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion [Paperback]

Paul Marshall (Author), Lela Gilbert (Author), Roberta Green-Ahmanson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2008

Why do the media so often miss or misunderstand major news stories? One reason is that, in today's complex and pervasively religious world, understanding religion is vital in accurately reporting and interpreting current events. The authors of Blind Spot argue that all too frequently journalists and commentators do not take religion seriously and therefore fail to grasp the religious context of the news.

Blind Spot's essays examine news stories reported by major media sources in which key religious dimensions were ignored, overlooked, or misrepresented. These stories range from the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, to Iran, Iraq, and the papal succession. Blind Spot offers all readers -- whether people of faith or not -- an interesting and balanced analysis of the news media's uneasy relationship with religion and religious issues.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It's not often that I let out a whoop of joy when I read a book, but I did while reading Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion. I've been preaching this gospel for 15 years and it's great to see it so brilliantly argued and supported in these pages. The editors have assembled a top-flight team of scholars and writers to build the case brick by solid brick. It is now an unassailable truth: without an understanding of religion, a journalist can miss the greatest stories of our time. This is the book I -- and my students -- have been waiting for." --Professor Ari Goldman, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and author of The Search for God at Harvard

"Since press blindness is one reason for the declining circulations of standard newspapers and newsmagazines, Blind Spot should be required reading for journalists and journalism professors who hope to respond not only to technological changes but to cultural ones as well." --World

"This is an instructive book for practitioners. It is written by experienced analysts of religion who want reporters to deepen their knowledge of the subject... Blind Spot should make any religion reporter a more astute student of the journalistic craft." --Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

"A provocative mix of painstaking scholarly analysis with lively samples of news reporting. The writing is cohesive and accessible, engaging and--occasionally--entertaining, and it could prove an effective point of departure for classroom use at undergraduate and graduate student levels."--Religion

About the Author

Paul Marshall is Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. Lela Gilbert is a freelance writer and editor who has authored or co-authored more than sixty published books. Roberta Green Ahmanson is an award-winning journalist and co-author of Islam at the Crossroads.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195374371
• ISBN-13: 978-0195374377
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing questions about religion and journalists February 1, 2009

By Jeri Nevermind VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Yes, all research shows journalists are among the most secular of all groups in the US. Even so, why, why do they so often ignore or mangle stories about religion?

Here is a collection of essays investigating the problem.

What is most puzzling about American journalists is not just their tone deafness to stories about religion. They actually seem unaware of religion's importance throughout the world. Explosive growth in Christianity in Africa and Asia is ignored. The vital differences in Muslim sects is rarely mentioned, let alone investigated.

In these essays, Marshall notes that "Americans have been educated to believe that democracy and secularization go hand in hand" (p 22) so that we have misreported, and misunderstood, news about religion that is vital politically.

Hertzke argues that "the mainstream press largely missed one of the great foreign policy and human rights surprises in recent decades" (p 65), that of the banding together of various religious groups to spotlight human rights abuses. And, shocker, the New York Times missed it entirely. It did, however, inform its readers about the activities of the enemy. Oops. I mean the activities of the Christian Coalition.

Vinson and Guth point out how badly all the chattering classes got religion in the 2004 election. "Stories...persistently pitted Bush's blind faith against Kerry's intellectual rationality with a clear assumption that religion and reason do not coexist" (p 91).

Amy Welborn reports on journalists and the Catholics. Every time a pope is mentioned, sure enough, there are those same dissenting Catholics, none of whom has stepped inside a church in decades.

Interesting essays. I just wish there were some good solutions.... Thank God for the internet. Read more ›

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent research and analysis February 15, 2009

By Kelly R. Moore

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is thorough, accurate, well-researched and actually entertaining. The message is shocking and unfortunate but well in need of being highlighted. Highly recommended to religious and non-religious alike.

5.0 out of 5 stars As true now as it was in 2008 February 9, 2013

By Maggie Reed

Format:Paperback

Vincent Carroll reviewed a new book in the Wall Street Journal in December of 2008 entitled Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion. What a fascinating book, and it made me think of just how blind we all are, in one respect or another.

The headline for Mr. Carroll's review was "God Is A Problem, Sources Say", and launches with a statement made in an article in the New York Times in November regarding the attacks on Mumbai. The statement was excerpted in this way: "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen or if it was an accidental hostage scene." The Times also speculated that it was an "unlikely target" .........for Islam extremists?

Blind Spot discusses various conflicts throughout the world and the religious "blind spot" that seems to afflict most Western journalists. Editor Paul Marshall, as quoted by Mr. Carroll, said journalists reluctant to accept the "fundamentalist motives" of jihadist motives concentrate on "terrorist statements that might fit into secular Western preconceptions about oppression, economics, freedom and progress."

I read that statement, and I was reminded immediately of the Kosovo Liberation Army's attempt to destroy non-Muslim communities in the northern provinces when I was there in 1998, just as Israel today is using the issue with Hamas as a reason to destroy Palestine. Hamas is killing Israelis, and the U.S. - as a sovereign nation that used to be religiously tolerant - pushes to use the fundamentalist Christian God as a reason to infiltrate other conflicts, and so on.

Even in Africa, religion plays a part in conflict. Take, for instance, the Lord's Resistance Army who hacked and killed hundreds in a church and the surrounding area in DR Congo not more than a couple of weeks ago.... Not only was this not a top story in the U.S., the Lord's Resistance Army - terrorists by all measures - was downgraded to the simple acronym LRA, and reported benignly as yet another hostile terrorist group. Take a look at all the predominant ruling parties in Africa and their adversaries. You will see that every single one of them is divisive not just ethnically, but religiously within that ethnicism.

Journalists ignore the religion factor, but the religion factor is everpresent - in conflict, in economics, in progress, in oppression. No one religious faction is more evil than another, either. They are all contributing factors to conflict, and yet journalists either bury their heads in the sand or are utterly ignorant of the factor religion plays in everything...or they wouldn't plant a story in a news source as reputable as the New York Times that stupidly thinks that a Jewish center in Mumbai was not a calculated target for Islamist extremists.

Bias is everywhere in Western media - predominantly U.S. media - and most importantly bias against an understanding of fact-based reporting.

Terry Mattingly, one of the contributors to Blind Spot, has this recommendation for quality reporting: "Editors do not need to try to hire more reporters who are religious believers," but reporters "who take religion seriously, reporters who know, or are willing to learn to hear the music." Read more ›

5.0 out of 5 stars interesting February 15, 2011

By Pops in Alabama

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I found this book to be interesting - a topic seldom discussed. I agree with its premise, and I have observed this lack of knowledge by some of the media . . . especially the younger know-it-all correspondents. NPR comes to mind.